In New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection v. Dimant, 212 N.J. 153 (2012), the New Jersey Supreme Court held that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) must establish, by a preponderance of the...more

Remedy decisions are almost always won or lost at the agency level. Once the ROD issues, a PRP’s chance of having the selected remedy overturned in court is slim to none – a point that was driven home in a recent decision in...more

In an environmental dispute between innocents involving a Church and a downgradient property owner, a federal court recently found the Church, although without original sin, was less innocent and should bear all the costs of...more

Any company handling hazardous substances in New Jersey must be aware that while the state was recently unsuccessful in expanding liability for damages under the Spill Act, the Supreme Court clarified what constitutes a...more

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania determined that a potentially responsible party conducting a site cleanup pursuant to both a state court order and an administrative settlement with a state...more

The Lower Fox River Superfund site continues to pump out decisions on key CERCLA issues. Most recently, the federal court in Wisconsin in US v. NCR Corp. took on the issue of divisibility of harm in granting a preliminary...more

The second anniversary of the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill highlights the big legal risks that come from an oil spill, whether at wells such as BP’s Macondo well, or at pipelines, terminals, storage tanks, or on...more

The New Jersey Appellate Division sides with Essex Chemical Corporation, a subsidiary of DOW Chemical, in a suit filed by the NJDEP in its effort to obtain both restoration and compensatory natural resource damages (“NRDs”)...more

Over the first two decades of CERCLA, the rule gradually emerged that parties which settled their liability were restricted to contribution claims under Section 113(f)(1) and would be entitled to contribution protection under...more

In October, the Maryland Court of Appeals issued a very disappointing ruling in the lead paint case of Jackson v. Dackman Co., which nullified a long-standing Maryland statute that granted qualified immunity from lead paint...more

(Originally published at: http://illinoisenvironmentallaw.com/cleanup/enforcement-actions-how-are-civil-penalties-calculated/)
I am often asked by owners and executives of manufacturers and other companies to calculate the...more

If there were any doubts about the potent weapon for recovery of environmental costs that the Model Toxics Control Act has become, those questions should be dispelled by a July 19 decision from Division Two of the Washington...more

An important decision has upheld the government’s power to order private parties to take expensive cleanup actions with little ability to challenge the order until after completing the work. On June 29, 2010, the U.S. Court...more